Aftermath
by Elisabeth Harker
Summary: A sequel to Braver Than We Are. Laurie, Jo, and the changes the vampire attacks have wrought upon them.
1. Chapter 1

Notes: This is the first chapter a continuation of my story "Braver Than We Are". If you haven't read that (all gazillion pages of it!), then this is going to be a rather confusing read. I guess I'm not done playing in that universe yet. The plan right now is for this to be a short multi-chapter story (and M rated!) set directly after Braver, and to follow it up with yet another (not M-rated!) sequel that will be similar to the first story in terms of scope and length, but quite different in terms of setting. Anyway, enjoy, and leave feedback to let me know that I'm not writing into a void.

If not for the cold necessity of it, Jo would have felt guilty for loving Laurie. It was just that, after all that had passed between them, there was nothing else left to do. Beth was gone, Marmee and Father were gone, and Amy was far worse than gone. That in itself should not have been enough to make her seek out the touch of a man who had once been her brother-in-law, but they had fought together for months, and nothing seemed more certain than that neither of them would be alive without the other.

That very first day when he'd come for her at her old home, after she'd finally made her promise to him and they'd walked back hand in hand to the house where the others were waiting, an awkward silence had fallen. They'd unlocked hands before entering the living room, Jo walking a little ahead of him. Professor Bhaer was seated on the couch, reading a book, which he put down to look up at Jo with concern as she stood in the doorway. She wondered if she looked any different than she had the evening before when she'd last seen him. She hated how he always looked at her with a face full of gentle worry now, as if she may well fall to pieces at any moment.

"Did find all you hoped to?" He asked. The question was a strange one, in that it suggested Jo had went back home with any particular hopes of finding anything at all.

She shrugged, and felt Laurie sit down beside her.

Hours passed before any of them said anything.

"There was blood, but it's all dried by now of course. Everything was dusty, and the kitchen in an awful state. Don't think I'll go back again," Jo whispered finally, as if the question had only just been asked.

Bhaer reached for her hand, but Jo pulled away. When Laurie rose, however, and tugged at her sleeve, Jo did not resist but followed him up the stairs.

"The old man's in love with you," Laurie said, quietly enough, once the doors were closed.

Jo frowned. "Don't be stupid," she replied, even though in some ways Laurie's words made sense.

The strangest thing happened then; Laurie laughed.

"What?" Jo asked.

"Nothing," Laurie said, sobering quickly, "it's just that you sounded so much like yourself just now…"

The way that Laurie trailed off left Jo wondering who she'd taken to sounding like lately, if not herself. Probably some kind of ghost or specter of death. That's how Jo felt most of the time, at least. The marks had disappeared from her neck, but she didn't imagine that they ever _could_ be erased from her heart.

"You don't look like yourself," Jo countered, "You're all stubbled and bleary eyed and ragged."

"Nobody knows how to tell a man what he wants to hear better than you do."

"I'm being serious Teddy. We're new selves now,"

Jo looked up at him, imploring him to understand. He cupped her face in response, and as much as Jo needed him to know how changed things were, his touch was warm and familiar and she was glad of it.

Perhaps this new Jo was more reckless than the old one, for after receiving his first kiss or two, she leaned into him so that he might continue. Indeed, she felt ready to do just about anything this night. Laurie's hands were on her hips, and she couldn't categorize how that it felt, except that it felt interesting.

Jo had no idea what she was meant to do with her own hands. Never in her life had they seemed so useless and in the way, hanging at her sides as they did. She settled on copying Laurie's pose, standing a little straighter as she did so. Laurie paused, and she pushed her lips against his as he had to hers so many times. Kissing, she rationed, wasn't something that should just happen to a person. She was tired of things just happening to her. She wanted to be the one to do something.

Laurie pulled her closer. Jo only did her best to kiss him in exactly the way that he did her, thinking surely that he must have the right idea.

Jo's heart raced when she felt one of Laurie's hands up near her neck, carefully undoing the button there. A second button popped open, and it didn't take a third before Jo guessed that Laurie didn't intend to leave any of them shut.

Jo flushed, even after sternly reminding herself that this would be the second time he undressed her, not the first. The idea of putting a stop to this flashed through her mind, and was dismissed almost as quickly. They kept each other alive, and Jo would live in this way as well. Only…

"Are the windows locked?" Jo whispered, stilling his hands as she turned "And the curtains, look, they aren't drawn."

She broke from Laurie's embrace to go over to the window. Nobody had opened it in weeks, even during the brightest light of day, so she needn't have worried there. The crucifix needed straightening, and even if it didn't, it was reassuring to place her hands on it for a minute. Jo hated windows these days. It was too easy to imagine evil little faces that weren't there any longer.

Laurie watched her, as if in disappointment.

"Amy's the only one left," he said. "We got all the others."

Jo nodded slowly, sitting down. Amy had been so sure of what would happen between her and Laurie after her death, and now they were proving her right.

"I don't know that Amy would understand," said Jo, as she sat down on the bed. "But that's only because she didn't go through it. She went through something else that was even more terrible, but not precisely the same thing we did. If she'd lived in the way that we have, she would know."

"What would she know?" Laurie said softly, but Jo only looked down away from him and shook her head. There were things she wanted to tell Laurie, but they were the very same things that she wanted to write, but couldn't. There was a panic somewhere within her, somewhere under the surface where she couldn't reach it. That was why she couldn't cry for mother and father, why she'd never woken up sobbing from a nightmare as she knew Laurie had.

It wasn't something that Jo wanted to consider, so she reached down to finish the task that Laurie had started. Three buttons later, and he'd knelt down in front of her, and was kissing the bare flesh just above the line of her chemise. His hands were on her hips again, and she paused, fingers trembling ever so slightly.

"Jo," he said, his voice deep with emotion, "we can… I can show you how to…"

Jo took a deep breath, and nodded her assent.


	2. Chapter 2

Laurie leant over Jo, loving the firm feel of her mouth pressed against his own. Kissing Jo now was a great deal like dancing with her, as he first had behind closed curtains at Sallie Gardiner's party - Nobody had ever taught her the woman's part, so she did her best to share his, with firm lips and her body pressed flush against him, and hands that did not hesitate to mirror his caresses. Laurie was glad of it. In his nightmares, the ones where he'd realize after making love to Jo that she was headless and dead, she hardly every moved. What he needed now was something clumsy, fumbling, and earnest… Something lively from somebody living, because Jo and he were both _alive_ and he didn't want to think too deeply on anything else.

They'd finished the buttons on Jo's dress by now, and pushed the rough autumn wool down away from her arms, leaving them white and exposed. He pressed his lips to the place right above the line of her chemise, before slipping his hands underneath it to remove that as well. She leaned back as he did so, just a little bit, and he climbed up onto the bed from his kneeling position on the ground before her. She moved away a bit to make room for him, and he pushed her back towards the headboard, where he continued to kiss her.

She was thinner than he had expected, he noticed absently, wishing that he didn't have to. She had always been slim and tall, a woman comprised more of coltish angles than the feminine softness that poets praised, but he knew that he oughtn't be able to count her ribs as his fingers raced up her flesh. She shivered slightly at his touch and paused in her own movement to watch his hand carefully as he cupped her breast. It was small and he could feel her heart beating beneath it. He looked up at her face, finding that she neither looked as desperately aroused as he'd hoped, nor as angry or alarmed as he'd dreaded. Indeed, he couldn't help but laugh at the way she arched her eyebrows at him, as if to ask what on earth it was that he found so interesting.

"What?" She asked, and he kissed her lips, still smiling. He held onto her bare shoulders, and kissed her face again, and then her neck, only to feel her stiffen abruptly and push him off the moment his lips touched her there. She put her hand to her neck to the place where his kiss had landed, as if his lips had burned her, and he his stomach sank with the certainty that he'd ruined everything.

"Jo, I…"

"It's hardly fair for you to sit and laugh at me while I'm half undressed and you're fully clothed, you know," she said, and even if her voice shook with the first word or two, she managed to bully it into steely determination before she'd finished. Her smile was unreadable, but Laurie was not about to protest as she went began to unhook his buttons. She made much quicker work of his shirt than he had her dress, though she watched him as if at a loss afterwards, before touching his chest hesitantly. Her hand was cool and dry, and just the knowledge that she – that Jo March, who he had loved in one way or another since the day that he'd met her – was touching him and looking at him like this was maddening. He placed his hand over his, and then lifted it to his lips, kissing each of her fingers in turn as she watched.

"I've never loved anyone more than you," he said, very softly, and immediately wished he hadn't. The wind howled outside as if in answer, and he suddenly had to swallow back the panicked flutter in his heart as he could not help but think of Amy, who he had loved, and loved truly. The tightness in his throat was painful.

Jo slipped her hand from his.

"Maybe we shouldn't," she said.

"I want to…" Laurie said, only he wasn't as certain as he'd been a moment before. What he was certain of was that he _had_ to. The longer they waited, the more time they gave the myriad complexities of all they had experienced to sneak up and ambush them, stealing away any promise of happiness.

Jo looked down at her breasts, as if just noticing that they were there.

"I don't," Jo said, standing up. There was every bit as much regret in her voice as Laurie felt.


	3. Chapter 3

"I don't," Jo whispered, only as soon as she'd said it she realized that she _did_. She most absolutely did want to be with Laurie. Surely stopping now would be worse, a hundred thousand times worse than continuing. She stood up from the bed quickly, keeping a somewhat awkward hold on the bottom half of her dress to stop it from slipping down all the way.

That was the problem with words. Sometimes they came out more quickly than intended, and needed to be abided by, lest there be nothing left to abide by once they were discarded.

Laurie, to his credit, did not try to follow her.

"Close your eyes for a moment," Jo ordered, not looking back before removing the rest of her dress. Laurie had brought her plenty of dresses from her old home, but whether from forgetfulness or some gentlemanly notion of his, he'd neglected most other things that a woman needed to wear on a daily basis. Taking one of his long nightshirts from his wardrobe didn't even feel out of the ordinary to her anymore, which was well enough, since her body was full of odd sensations as it was. She hardly knew why the strange heat in the pit of her stomach should persist now that he'd stopped touching her.

"Jo, I didn't mean…"

Laurie was behind her now, his hands on her shoulders. Maybe he'd been watching her the whole time. Jo didn't want to ask. She turned around to look at him, and just doing so seemed enough to make his words run dry.

Maybe he'd meant to say that he didn't love her… or at least that he didn't love her the most. Jo couldn't say if that was what she wanted to hear or not.

"We should wait until morning," Jo blurted out, before he could finish or clarify. "When it's light out we can talk."

"I thought you said you weren't afraid," Laurie said, which only showed that he was completely missing the point.

"I'm not. You're the one who is going to have nightmare tonight, not me." Jo looked away from him after she'd said that, towards the window for lack of anywhere else to cast her gaze. She wondered if she ought to check the crucifix again. She wanted so badly to touch it to make sure that it was still there, but she already _had_, and she was quite sure that if she looked this second time it would be followed by a third, a fourth, and a twentieth before the night was through.

"Well said, Jo. Are you trying to be bitter and spiteful then?"

Laurie's tone of voice made her feel naked all over again, but she merely shook her head, despite the heat rising in her cheeks.

Laurie sighed.

"What do you dream about?" He asked.

"Nothing," Jo admitted. "I hope not to start. Do you need me to stay with you?"

"Might be better if you didn't," Laurie said.

"I'll go then. In the morning though…?"

Laurie nodded, and Jo left, closing the door behind her. She stood for several minutes in front of his room, thinking only of how vast his home seemed, and how it wasn't hers. Then she went to the library knowing she would write or stare at a page until she was too exhausted to continue.


End file.
